Latest news with #NCLA
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Yahoo
In NCLA Amicus Win, Supreme Court Revives Innocent Family's Suit over FBI's Wrong-House Raid
Curtrina Martin, et al. v. United States of America, et al. Washington, DC, June 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' dismissal of Martin v. United States, an Atlanta family's Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) suit against the government for a wrong-house raid in 2017. FBI agents invaded the home of Trina Martin and her family, shackling her partner on the floor and holding a half-naked Ms. Martin at gunpoint, while she expressed concern for her seven-year-old son's safety elsewhere in the house. One big problem: the FBI SWAT team had knocked down the door of the wrong home, on the wrong street, because the agent in charge had failed to verify its clearly marked address. The Justices remanded the case to the Eleventh Circuit for reconsideration. As NCLA's amicus curiae brief urged, the Eleventh Circuit should ultimately rule on remand that the FTCA does not shield the government from liability when federal law enforcement officers raid the wrong house. Ms. Martin and her family filed FTCA claims against the government for assault, battery, and false imprisonment, as well as Fourth Amendment claims against the individual FBI agents. The Eleventh Circuit below upheld the district court's dismissal of the case, concluding that the agents' actions violated no 'clearly established' law. It ruled that the family suffered harm resulting from an agent's 'discretionary act' (i.e., failing to check the house address), warranting total governmental immunity and no path to relief for the Martin family. The Eleventh Circuit also determined that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution could shield the FBI and its agents from FTCA suits. NCLA's amicus brief forcefully argued that the Eleventh Circuit's mode of inquiry—which departed from the analytical process employed by all sister circuits—was inconsistent with the language and intent of the FTCA. Congress amended the FTCA in 1974 expressly to ensure that innocent people subjected to wrong-house raids and similar abuses by federal law enforcement officers would have a cause of action to sue. By expanding the FTCA's discretionary-function exception to encompass wrong-house raids such as this one, the Eleventh Circuit's decision effectively nullified the 1974 law. As Justice Sotomayor underscored in her concurrence (joined by Justice Jackson), 'Courts … should not ignore the existence of the [1974 amendment], or the factual context that inspired its passage, when construing the discretionary-function exception. … [A]ny interpretation should allow for liability in the very cases Congress amended the FTCA to remedy.' Today's Supreme Court ruling does not decide whether the 'discretionary function' exception applies in this case, an issue that the Court ordered the Eleventh Circuit to resolve, but the Justices found that the Supremacy Clause is not a defense the government may invoke in FTCA lawsuits. Justice Gorsuch explained in his opinion for the Court: 'The FTCA is the 'supreme' federal law addressing the United States' liability for torts committed by its agents. It supplies the 'exclusive remedy' for damages claims arising out of federal employees' official conduct.' NCLA released the following statements: 'The Supreme Court rightly held that innocent civilians should not be stripped of any meaningful remedy when they suffer abuse at the hands of federal law enforcement. The Martin family deserves their day in court. On remand, NCLA trusts that the Eleventh Circuit will carefully evaluate what qualifies as 'reasonable' law enforcement—and recognize that a trained FBI agent who fails to check a clearly marked house number before commencing a raid because 'it was dark outside' does not qualify.'— Casey Norman, Litigation Counsel, NCLA 'Law enforcement officers should not be able to evade accountability for entering the wrong house and terrorizing an innocent family in the middle of the night when Congress intentionally provided for redress in cases against the federal government in such circumstances. Thankfully, the Supreme Court's decision reaffirms that the Eleventh Circuit was wrong to preclude relief in this case and others like it.'— Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel, NCLA 'All too often, court-created doctrines are used to reduce the government's liability to people whose civil liberties it has violated. Congratulations to our friends at the Institute for Justice for convincing the Supreme Court to clip the wings of such a doctrine in this case—at least where Congress had explicitly created a cause of action to sue.'— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA For more information visit the page here. ABOUT NCLA NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA's public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans' fundamental rights. ### CONTACT: Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NCLA's King George III Prize Crowns Former SEC Chair Gensler 2024's Worst Civil Liberties Violator
Washington, DC, June 11, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Administrative State's biggest abuser of civil liberties in 2024 was former Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler! After weeks of online voting for the New Civil Liberties Alliance's Fifth Annual 'King George III Prize,' Gensler defeated 31 other rights-violating bureaucrats in a campaign on social media. The 'winner' was announced last night at an event in Washington, DC. Gensler earned the Prize in part for overseeing construction of SEC's 'Consolidated Audit Trail' ('CAT'), the largest government-mandated mass collection of personal financial data in American history. Without any statutory authority, SEC is forcing brokers, exchanges, clearinghouses and alternative trading systems to capture and send detailed information on every investor's trades in U.S. markets to a centralized database. NCLA is suing to stop the CAT in our Davidson, et al. v. Gensler lawsuit. Gensler also continued SEC's illegal 'Gag Rule' that forbids every American who settles a regulatory enforcement case with the agency from even truthfully criticizing their cases in public for the rest of their lives. NCLA's Powell, et al. v. SEC case aims to overturn the 'Gag Rule.' NCLA also presented the National Center for Public Policy Research with our George Washington Award for Client Bravery last night. NCLA represented NCPPR in the lawsuit against SEC that persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to overturn Nasdaq's 'Board Diversity Rules,' which sought to impose gender, race and sexual orientation quotas on corporate board membership for Nasdaq-listed companies. NCPPR is also a Plaintiff in Davidson v. Gensler and NCLA's client in our suit against unconstitutional SEC rules that would require public companies to disclose their climate-related business risks and mitigation procedures. NCLA honored Tim Harper and Marc Wheat of Advancing American Freedom with the George Washington Award for Best Amicus Curiae Brief, which they submitted in Davidson v. Gensler. Alexander J. Phipps of Antonin Scalia Law School took home the Student Note Award accompanied by a $10,000 prize to be split with the George Mason Law Review for his timely piece: 'Interpreting the APA's Triggering Provision for Formal Adjudication After Loper Bright.' It addresses implications of NCLA's historic overthrow of Chevron deference at the Supreme Court in Relentless, Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. NCLA released the following statements: 'For the fifth year, NCLA's King George III Prize highlights the true abusers of Americans' civil liberties—unelected bureaucrats. Former SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler is our newest 'winner' for overseeing one of the largest information grabs in our nation's history. His Consolidated Audit Trail program is something right out of George Orwell's 1984, with Big Brother tracking every stock market trade Americans make. Chair Gensler may have been unelected, but this award holds him accountable for violating the civil rights of millions of Americans.'— Karen Harned, Director of Engagement, NCLA 'This year's nominees for America's Worst Bureaucrat were a true rogues' gallery of civil liberties violators. But former SEC Chair Gary Gensler stood apart as most deserving of the ignominy the King George III Prize brings.'— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA ABOUT NCLA NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA's public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans' fundamental rights. ### CONTACT: Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NCLA Seeks Dismissal of Tainted SEC Enforcement Proceeding After Unauthorized Staff Actions
In the Matter of Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Lemelson and Secs. and Exchange Comm'n v. Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Lemelson Washington, DC, June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed a motion to dismiss a three-year-old administrative enforcement proceeding the Securities and Exchange Commission has been prosecuting against its client, the Reverend Father Emmanuel Lemelson, a Greek Orthodox priest and activist investor. The proceeding has been irreparably tainted twice over, first by the filing of an ultra vires federal lawsuit purportedly on behalf of SEC but that the Commissioners never authorized. Then a recently disclosed SEC internal control failure further tainted the proceeding. These irregularities, the latest twists in the Commission's longstanding and publicly adversarial relationship with Fr. Lemelson, negate any plausible appearance that the Commission can now fairly and impartially adjudicate its related administrative enforcement prosecution against him. The SEC enforcement division's pursuit of Fr. Lemelson began more than a decade ago and has continued ever since. On April 30, 2025, the Division of Enforcement filed the latest federal lawsuit, purportedly on SEC's behalf, seeking judicial enforcement of a belated administrative subpoena issued earlier this year by one of SEC's administrative law judges (ALJs). But the Division subsequently admitted that it filed the lawsuit without first consulting with or getting approval from the presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed SEC Commissioners, erroneously asserting that it possessed 'delegated authority' to file the suit. NCLA challenged the legitimacy of that purported delegated authority. Only a week after the Court ordered the parties to brief the matter (and only a month after launching the lawsuit), SEC abruptly withdrew the lawsuit on May 30 instead of defending itself. While the lawsuit was pending, the Division of Enforcement also admitted that, purportedly due to yet another internal control failure at SEC, an unspecified number of internal Division emails were sent to an unnamed former Division of Enforcement staff member who had transferred to the Office of the SEC Chairman to serve as counsel to the Chairman in early April 2025, including emails related to the litigation against Fr. Lemelson. This SEC internal control failure is separate from the control failure that caused SEC to dismiss 42 pending administrative enforcement proceedings en masse—two years ago, almost to the day—because enforcement staff had improper access to ALJs' files, including those then pending against NCLA clients Michelle Cochran and Marian Young. In conjunction with its motion to dismiss the SEC administrative proceeding, NCLA has also asked the SEC ALJ to issue a subpoena to the Division of Enforcement to produce documents relevant to the recent breaches of SEC protocol and internal controls. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit separately agreed with NCLA that a Massachusetts district court improperly denied Fr. Lemelson's claim for attorney's fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act in a related case SEC pursued against him from 2018 through 2022. And days later, NCLA filed a notice of appeal seeking review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit of a recent district court decision dismissing Lemelson's amended complaint that sought declaratory and injunctive relief to stop SEC's ongoing administrative enforcement proceeding against him on constitutional and other legal grounds. NCLA released the following statements: 'In administrative adjudications, the agency is supposed to be the neutral and impartial final judge of the dispute in both fact and appearance, but that cannot happen if the agency is simultaneously locked in longstanding adversarial litigation against the same respondent in federal court. This case exemplifies what can go wrong when Congress assigns important responsibilities to unelected agency heads who then further diffuse political accountability by subdelegating those responsibilities to agency staff.'— Russ Ryan, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA 'It is utterly outrageous that SEC's enforcement division filed a lawsuit without permission from the appointed officials at the top of the Commission. Kudos to SEC for yanking the lawsuit late last month. Hopefully that means there is a new sheriff in town willing to ride herd on what has been an agency running amok since at least 2017.'— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA For more information visit the case pages here and here. ABOUT NCLA NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA's public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans' fundamental rights. ### CONTACT: Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NCLA Asks D.C. Circuit Court to Erase CPSC's Illegal Infant Support Cushion Rule
Heroes Technology (US) LLC d/b/a Snuggle Me Organic v. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Washington, DC, June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed an opening brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to vacate the Consumer Product Safety Commission's mandatory Safety Standard for Infant Support Cushions, which regulates Heroes Technology's Snuggle Me Infant Lounger and some 2,000 other products. CPSC promulgated the Rule by unlawfully classifying these products as durable goods, instead of treating them as the textile or textile-based items they are. These products were thus regulated through a far less rigorous process than Congress ordinarily requires for consumer product safety standards. As a result of the Rule, the company had to stop producing its high-selling and highly sought-after Infant Lounger. NCLA urges the Court to remove this unlawful Rule that threatens our client's company and countless other small businesses. The Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA) allows CPSC to use an expedited rulemaking process only when it promulgates mandatory safety standards governing durable products for children under 5 years old, like cribs or strollers. If the product is not a durable infant or toddler product, it must follow the traditional, more exacting regulatory process. CPSC used the expedited children's durable goods process to create its new Rule for 'infant support cushions'—a previously non-existent product category that the Rule created. But Snuggle Me Infant Loungers, a product made of organic cotton and polyester fiber that parents use to gently hold their infants when awake, are textile-based and generally not considered durable goods. CPSC had no authority to promulgate the mandatory Rule governing these products using the expedited and less careful process. Congress has stated it prefers voluntary product safety standards, yet the Rule allows CPSC to claim power over a major market segment instead of crafting product-specific voluntary standards with Heroes Technology and other eager industry partners. Since NCLA persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron doctrine in June 2024, the agency is owed no deference regarding its untenable legal interpretation. Despite Heroes Technology and other companies raising serious concerns about the Rule's dubious justifications, CPSC proceeded to regulate them. The Commission also ignored producers' concerns about their ability to redesign their products and apply new and ill-defined testing methods in the time allotted by the Rule. The agency declared the regulation would be effective on May 5, 2025, just 180 days after its promulgation. This hasty choice was certainly not 'reasoned decisionmaking' by CPSC, making the Rule arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agency actions to be 'reasonable and reasonably explained.' NCLA released the following statements: 'Government efficiency is something that is usually lauded. But here, CPSC chose a regulatory shortcut that not only ignores the limits of the agency's power but also was conducted using less rigorous methods and analyses than is required for most consumer products. When it comes to infant safety, the Commission should be focused on creating the best rules, not the fastest path to regulation.'— Kara Rollins, Litigation Counsel, NCLA 'CSPC's failure to maintain a consistent, textual definition of 'durable' in the statute threatens parents' access to useful products and endangers infants because the alternatives parents will use in the absence of those products are unknown and unaddressed by CPSC.'— John Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA 'The D.C. Circuit should clamp down hard on CSPC's attempt to expand its power by taking a regulatory shortcut Congress only supplied for a very limited class of durable products. CPSC appears to be trying to end-run the D.C. Circuit's recent Window Covering Manufacturers ruling that required rigorous processes before issuing product safety standards. The agency deserves a hearty benchslap from the Court for this evasive maneuver.'— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA For more information visit the case page here. ABOUT NCLA NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA's public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans' fundamental rights. ### CONTACT: Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yomiuri Shimbun
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Meet the Small-Business Owner Suing Trump over Tariffs
Dan Anderson/For The Washington Post Small-business owner Emily Ley is suing the Trump administration over its tariffs. PENSACOLA, Florida – After a long day promoting her new cookbook, entrepreneur Emily Ley sank into her couch and began writing about the threat that President Donald Trump's tariffs posed to her nine-person company. Ley sells high-end paper planners, advice books and other office staples online and at major stores such as Target. The only cost-effective way to run her company, Simplified, is to manufacture the products in China, she says. So when the White House signaled in March that it would escalate its trade war with Beijing, Ley wanted her Instagram followers to know who would foot the bill. 'I cannot be quiet about this anymore,' she wrote. 'Tariffs are killing businesses.' Ley watched as discussions about home organization and dinner prep in her Instagram comments shifted to debates over trade policy, with some commenters praising her transparency and others calling on her followers to switch to planners made in the United States. 'One minute I was talking about how to make an easy pot roast, and the next minute we're talking about an international trade war,' Ley said The post attracted the attention of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonprofit that asked Ley to join a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the tariffs. Now the 42-year-old mother of three and one-time Trump voter is in the vanguard of a rapidly expanding legal campaign arguing that the president overstepped his authority and usurped the role of Congress in applying levies to almost all imports entering the United States. Ley said she had multiple conversations with the NCLA about what it would mean to sue the president. The NCLA describes itself as a nonpartisan organization that addresses violations of Americans' civil liberties, but it has previously received financial support from conservative donor Charles Koch's foundation – highlighting how backlash to Trump's tariffs does not neatly follow traditional political lines. 'I knew that I could be putting a target on my back,' Ley said. Bots have attacked every post she shares on Instagram with pornographic links since the day she sued the president, she said. Some customers have told her that they will stop buying her products because of the lawsuit, but she has also attracted new buyers who want to support her political cause. The Trump administration's chaotic trade war has imposed punishing tariffs on China and other countries in an effort to rebalance a globalized economy that Trump says has disadvantaged American manufacturers. While the on-again, off-again tariffs have roiled markets and global supply chains, many large companies and top business executives have remained silent, in part for fear of drawing Trump's ire, and no Fortune 500 company has pursued legal action. That has left small businesses like Simplified to take the lead in challenging the tariffs. Operating on narrow margins dependent on cheaper foreign labor, many small businesses view the tariff payments they would owe the government as an existential threat, forcing them to weigh raising prices, laying off staff – or even closing. Since Simplified filed its lawsuit in federal court in Florida in early April, four additional Florida small businesses joined the litigation. Another nonprofit, Liberty Justice Center, has filed a suit in the U.S. Court of International Trade on behalf of a group of small businesses – including a fishing gear provider, a women's cycling business, and a wine and spirits company. The states of Oregon and California have also sued. The complaints argue that no other president has used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to implement tariffs, and that Trump cannot bypass Congress's authority to draft tariff laws simply by invoking an emergency. Andrew Morris, the NCLA's Senior Litigation Counsel, said traditionally, businesses would be able to share input with federal agencies and lawmakers before tariffs of this magnitude are imposed. 'It's not a one-man process,' Morris said. 'That's what happens when you bypass the democratic and administrative process.' Tim Meyer, the co-director of the Center for International and Comparative Law at Duke University Law School, said the lawsuits have 'a good chance of succeeding,' especially if any eventually reach the Supreme Court. Trump is 'trying to basically wholesale rewrite a whole bunch of federal legislation that Congress has passed over the years on the basis of a statute that doesn't even use the word tariff,' said Meyer, who clerked for Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch when he served on the 10th Circuit Court. Small businesses – defined as having fewer than 500 employees – employ more than 61.7 million Americans, about 46.4 percent of private-sector employees, according to 2023 data from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy. They make up 43.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, the standard measure of a country's economic output. When Trump was asked whether he would consider tariff relief for small businesses during an interview with NBC News in May, he brushed off concerns. 'They're not going to need it. They're going to make so much money,' he said. Ley said she wanted to 'throw rocks' when she saw that interview. 'When you listen to the president talk about it, it's like we don't exist,' Ley said. 'It's impacting real families, real American jobs, real American livelihoods, real American customers – but he won't acknowledge it.' Ley's road to suing the president of the United States began in 2011, shortly after her first son was born. Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of managing a house, a business and a newborn, Ley did what many American mothers would do: She drove to Target. But every product she picked up stressed her out more, as she paged through prompts to manage household budgets. Ley realized she could use the design skills she honed making her wedding invitations and stationery to create a planner that contained a simple schedule and a to-do list. Soon, she began selling the plastic-bound planners with laminated covers on Etsy, an online marketplace. After she paid off her business expenses, she had zero profit for the first year. So she began meeting with manufacturers in the United States, in search of a cost-effective plan for production. Her vision for the planners included gold spiral binding and stickers that could be used to mark key events. Again and again, Ley said, she was told that there was no way to make the product in a profitable way in the United States. She began staying up late and sending emails to factories in China. In 2012, she finally connected with a Chinese manufacturer who took a chance on her. 'It just took off from there,' she said. As Ley juggled a growing business and family, the 2016 presidential race was not at the top of her mind. Originally from the South, Ley said she was raised to vote for 'party not person' and grew up in a family that revered Republican politicians like George W. Bush. In November of that year, Ley walked into a voting booth at her local library with her then 5-year-old son in tow. They said a prayer and Ley cast her ballot for Trump. Ley said she regretted the decision almost immediately. As a mother who had just undergone IVF to have twins a year earlier, she soon realized that she did not agree with the policies of the man she voted for. Shortly after the election, Ley changed her voter registration to Democrat. After Trump announced he would run for president again, Ley said she worried about his campaign promises to increase tariffs and tried to convince other voters he was serious about overhauling the global economy. Then, when he was reelected, she braced for impact. The levies Trump implemented during his first term had created new costs for the company, snarling plans to hire more staff and launch an app. Ley knew the tariffs would be higher in Trump's second term, but even her most pessimistic projections did not account for the chaos to come. Each of Simplified's signature planners costs about $12 to make in China and includes specialized pieces that Simplified was unable to source in the United States. At the height of trade tensions with China this spring, Simplified was looking at paying tariff rates of 145 percent – which would add an almost $18 tax on each planner. The levies threatened to eat into Ley's profits and increase the costs of running her business. Simplified already sells the planners for $54 each, and Ley said she does not think she can stay competitive if she raises the price any further. Simplified employees have been exploring whether other countries have the manufacturing capabilities to produce its planners and other products, fielding calls from potential partners in India, Turkey and Southeast Asia. But the company is struggling to make long-term plans as the White House repeatedly changes its tariff policies. Since the inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump administration officials have announced new or revised tariff policies more than 50 times, according to a Washington Post analysis. Tariffs now stand at 30 percent on imports from China after the Trump administration announced a deal Monday to lower tariffs for 90 days. But the continued uncertainty is making it impossible to make plans, Ley said. Ley has paused plans to launch an Amazon storefront and to expand her product line. She is making cuts to bring down the cost of each planner, like replacing the keepsake boxes the planners ship in with bubble wrap. She's even looking at downsizing her staff or reducing salaries. Ley said she's frustrated that she's confronting these choices not because of a lack of consumer demand or bad business decisions, but because of intentional policies by the White House. 'It feels a little bit like our business didn't fail. Our government failed us, Ley said. She recently wrote on Instagram that she feels like a 'pawn' in a game. 'I feel like we're red and black checker pieces in a cheap checkers game when it could be chess,' she told The Post. 'I don't feel like we're part of some sort of really forward-thinking strategy.'
